Enermax CS-003-A106 Case Review

Introduction

Enermax has long been known as a high quality manufacturer of power supplies, however they also make computer cases. This Enermax CS-003-A106 case is a really nice, it comes with an Enermax 300w Pentium 4 ready power supply. It has a top and side blow hole, and has lots of other areas where you can put fans. This case comes with 4 5.25 bays, 2 visible3.5 bays and 4 hidden. The case is very sturdy and not flimsy and thin like a lot of cases.

The box is nice and thick so that the case is protected during shipping, it also has some of the specs of what’s inside.

The case is also nice and protected inside with Styrofoam and in plastic to prevent scratching. You get screws and motherboard mounts, a 3.5″ faceplate, and a power supply cord. You also get a 300w power supply which we will look at later.

The front of the case is really cool looking with a blue bezel, it comes with 2 3.5″ bays where you can put drives, you can also cover one up with the bay cover provided. The power button has 2 green LEDs and the HDD LED is red. The only thing I really would like to have seen on the front bezel is a spot for a case badge. The back of the case has a spot for 2 80mm fans, these can also should be cut out for better air flow.

The top of the case has a precut blowhole which is not quite what I expected it’s more of a pattern cutout rather than a blowhole. It would have been nice to see it totally cut out hole and a fan grill, the fact that it’s just a pattern cutout is going to cut down on airflow. The side hole is basically the same thing, a pattern cutout which acts as the grill.

You can see from both pictures the fans are mounted with black plastic pushpin type things which hold the fan in place, Enermax should have used screws instead. I went ahead and changed then to regular fan screws because they work and look better.

The power supply that you get with this case is an Enermax EG301P-VE, which is 300w. Here are some of the specs of it. I also opened it up to take a look inside.

Meet ATX 2.03 & ATX +12V 1.1 Version. Pentium 4 supported

Compliant with AMD K7.

Thermal control fan

Fan speed monitoring by M/B

+5Vsb output current 2.2A output

Noiseless & High MTBF

I was excited to see that the cables on this Enermax power supply were not extremely long like the one I previously reviewed. The length of the cabling on this power supply is much more reasonable, especially for this case. The power supply comes with all the connections needed for AMD and Intel.

It has the motherboard ATX plug, 5 Molex plugs, 2 berg plugs, a 12v plug for Pentium 4 motherboards, an AUX connection for Intel server motherboards, and a plug for a motherboard header which will monitor the RPMs from the fan inside the power supply.